Possible causes of false general relativity violations in gravitational wave observations

Creators: Gupta, Anuradha¹; Arun, K. G.²; Barausse, Enrico³; Bernard, Laura⁴; Berti, Emanuele⁵; Bhat, Sajad A.²; Buonanno, Alessandra⁶; Cardoso, Vitor⁷; Cheung, Shun Yin⁸; Clarke, Teagan A.⁸; Datta, Sayantani²; Dhani, Arnab⁶; Ezquiaga, Jose María; Gupta, Ish⁹; Guttman, Nir⁸; Hinderer, Tanja¹⁰; Hu, Qian¹¹; Janquart, Justin¹²; Johnson-McDaniel, Nathan¹; Kashyap, Rahul⁹; Krishnendu, N. V.¹³; Lasky, Paul D.⁸; Lundgren, Andrew¹⁴; Maggio, Elisa⁶; Mahapatra, Parthapratim²; Maselli, Andrea¹⁵; Narayan, Purnima¹; Nielsen, Alex B.¹⁶; Nuttall, Laura K.¹⁴; Pani, Paolo¹⁷; Passenger, Lachlan⁸; Payne, Ethan¹⁸; Pompili, Lorenzo⁶; Reali, Luca⁵; Saini, Pankaj²; Samajdar, Anuradha¹²; Tiwari, Shubhanshu¹⁹; Tong, Hui⁸; Van Den Broeck, Chris¹²; Yagi, Kent²⁰; Yang, Huan²¹; Yunes, Nicolas²²; Sathyaprakash, B. S.²³

1. University of Mississippi
2. Chennai Mathematical Institute
3. INFN Sezione di Trieste
4. French National Centre for Scientific Research
5. Johns Hopkins University
6. Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics
7. University of Lisbon
8. ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery
9. Pennsylvania State University
10. Utrecht University
11. University of Glasgow
12. National Institute for Subatomic Physics
13. International Centre for Theoretical Sciences
14. University of Portsmouth
15. Gran Sasso National Laboratory
16. University of Stavanger
17. INFN Sezione di Roma I
18. California Institute of Technology
19. University of Zurich
20. University of Virginia
21. Perimeter Institute
22. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
23. Cardiff University

Abstract

General relativity (GR) has proven to be a highly successful theory of gravity since its inception. The theory has thrivingly passed numerous experimental tests, predominantly in weak gravity, low relative speeds, and linear regimes, but also in the strong-field and very low-speed regimes with binary pulsars. Observable gravitational waves (GWs) originate from regions of spacetime where gravity is extremely strong, making them a unique tool for testing GR, in previously inaccessible regions of large curvature, relativistic speeds, and strong gravity. Since their first detection, GWs have been extensively used to test GR, but no deviations have been found so far. Given GR's tremendous success in explaining current astronomical observations and laboratory experiments, accepting any deviation from it requires a very high level of statistical confidence and consistency of the deviation across GW sources. In this paper, we compile a comprehensive list of potential causes that can lead to a false identification of a GR violation in standard tests of GR on data from current and future ground-based GW detectors. These causes include detector noise, signal overlaps, gaps in the data, detector calibration, source model inaccuracy, missing physics in the source and in the underlying environment model, source misidentification, and mismodeling of the astrophysical population. We also provide a rough estimate of when each of these causes will become important for tests of GR for different detector sensitivities. We argue that each of these causes should be thoroughly investigated, quantified, and ruled out before claiming a GR violation in GW observations.

Copyright and License

Copyright A. Gupta et al. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Published by the SciPost Foundation.

Funding

A. Gupta, N.K. Johnson-McDaniel, and P. Narayan are supported by NSF Grants No. AST-2205920 and PHY-2308887. K.G. Arun acknowledges support from the Department of Science and Technology and Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) of India via the Swarnajayanti Fellowship Grant DST/SJF/PSA-01/2017-18 and the Core Research Grant CRG/2021/004565. K.G. Arun and B.S. Sathyaprakash acknowledge the support of the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum through the Indo-US Centre for GravitationalPhysics and Astronomy, grant IUSSTF/JC-142/2019. E. Barausse acknowledges support from the European Union’s H2020 ERC Consolidator Grant “GRavity from Astrophysical to Microscopic Scales” (Grant No. GRAMS-815673), the PRIN 2022 grant “GUVIRP - Gravity tests in the UltraViolet and InfraRed with Pulsar timing”, and the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 101007855. L. Bernard acknowledges financial support from the ANR PRoGRAM project, grant ANR-21- CE31-0003-001 and the EU Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement no. 101007855. E. Berti and L. Reali are supported by NSF Grants No. AST-2307146, PHY-2207502, PHY-090003 and PHY-20043, by NASA Grant No. 21-ATP21-0010, by the John Templeton Foundation Grant 62840, by the Simons Foundation, and by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation grant No. PGR01167. V. Cardoso is a Villum Investigator and a DNRF Chair, supported by the VILLUM Foundation (grant no. VIL37766) and the DNRF Chair program (grant no. DNRF162) by the Danish National Research Foundation. V. Cardoso acknowledges financial support provided under the European Union’s H2020 ERC Advanced Grant “Black holes: gravitational engines of discovery” grant agreement no. Gravitas–101052587. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. V. Cardoso has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101007855 and No. 101131233. S.Y. Cheung, T. Clarke, N. Guttman, P.D. Lasky, L. Passenger, and H. Tong are supported by Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Gravitational-Wave Discovery CE170100004 and CE230100016, Discovery Projects DP220101610 and DP230103088, and LIEF LE210100002. S. Datta acknowledges support from UVA Arts and Sciences Rising Scholars Fellowship. A. Dhani, I. Gupta, R. Kashyap and B.S. Sathyaprakash were supported in part by NSF Grants No. PHY-2207638, AST-2307147, PHY-2308886, and PHYS-2309064. B. Sathyaprakash also thanks the Aspen Center for Physics (ACP) for hospitality during the summer of 2022. J.M. Ezquiaga is supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 847523 INTERACTIONS, and by VILLUM FONDEN (grant no. 53101 and 37766). E. Maggio acknowledges funding from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - project number: 386119226. E. Maggio is supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 101107586. A. Maselli acknowledges financial support from MUR PRIN Grants No. 2022-Z9X4XS and 2020KB33TP. S. Tiwari is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione grant no. PZ00P2-202204. K. Yagi is supported by NSF Grant PHY-2207349, PHY-2309066, PHYS-2339969, and the Owens Family Foundation. N. Yunes is supported by the Simons Foundation through Award No. 896696, the NSF Grant No. PHY-2207650, and the NASA Award No. 80NSSC22K0806.

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